On any given night, more than a thousand people across Santa Barbara County are without stable housing — sleeping in vehicles, shelters or outdoors.
Most of the systems working to help them depend on a regional partnership that few residents have ever heard of.
During the past two years, that partnership has had to adapt repeatedly to changing federal policy. What happens next will shape how quickly — or whether — people currently living on the street find permanent housing.
That partnership is the Santa Barbara County Continuum of Care Program (CoC), a Housing & Urban Development Department designation of CA-603.
It is not a shelter or a single agency. Rather, it is the regional partnership through which local governments, housing authorities, nonprofit organizations and behavioral-health agencies coordinate homeless services and compete for federal funding on behalf of the county’s eight incorporated cities and its unincorporated communities.
The collaborative system they have built over decades is now being tested.
Why Continuums of Care Exist
Before HUD created the Continuum of Care model, homeless-service providers often competed against one another for the same federal grants.
The result was fragmented planning, duplicated services and gaps in care. HUD introduced the CoC model during the 1990s and Congress formalized it through the Homeless Emergency Assistance and Rapid Transition to Housing (HEARTH) Act of 2009.
The goal was to encourage regional planning rather than competition among providers.
In Santa Barbara County, the Community Services Department’s Housing & Community Development Division serves as HUD’s designated collaborative applicant.
It prepares the consolidated federal application, administers grants, coordinates the annual point-in-time count, and manages the county’s Homeless Management Information System (HMIS).
Outreach, shelter, rapid rehousing and permanent supportive housing are delivered by nonprofit organizations, including Good Samaritan Shelter, New Beginnings, PATH Santa Barbara, Partners in Housing Solutions, Channel Islands YMCA, City Net, Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley and SB ACT (Santa Barbara Alliance for Community Transformation).
A Partnership, Not an Agency
The Continuum of Care is governed by a representative board chaired by Chuck Flacks. Because the CoC is not itself a legal entity, it functions as a regional planning partnership bringing together local governments, housing authorities, behavioral-health agencies, nonprofit organizations, schools, tribal representatives, and people with lived experience of homelessness.
The board establishes priorities, evaluates project performance, recommends how local projects should be ranked for federal funding, and submits those recommendations through the county’s collaborative applicant to HUD, which makes the final funding decisions.
Nearly every federal dollar is tied to specific projects and performance requirements established by HUD.
The First Attempt
Acting on President Donald Trump’s executive order “Ending Crime and Disorder on American Streets,” HUD released its fiscal year 2025 Continuum of Care funding notice in November 2025.
The proposal would have sharply reduced support for permanent housing while expanding transitional housing and adding sobriety and treatment requirements.
The National Low Income Housing Coalition estimated the proposal could place as many as 170,000 people nationwide at risk of returning to homelessness.
Twenty states challenged the policy in federal court. HUD restored the previous funding rules after a federal injunction, and Congress ultimately funded the program under its traditional framework. The stability proved temporary.
The Second Attempt
On June 1, HUD issued a new funding notice making $4.04 billion available nationwide while restructuring much of the program along similar lines.
Historically, roughly 90% of Continuum of Care funding had been protected for renewal projects. Under the new rules, only about 60% receives that protection, while a larger share becomes fully competitive.
HUD characterized the changes as a shift toward a “recovery-first” approach, arguing that Housing First had not adequately addressed the underlying causes of homelessness.
A new lawsuit challenging the FY2026 funding notice remains pending, while the administration’s proposed FY2027 budget would eliminate the Continuum of Care program altogether.
What This Means Locally
In the FY2024 competition, HUD awarded approximately $3.76 million to CA-603 for renewal and bonus projects, supporting permanent supportive housing through PATH Santa Barbara and rapid rehousing through New Beginnings.
California’s Homeless Housing, Assistance and Prevention (HHAP) program has provided additional support, but state funding supplements rather than replaces federal dollars.
A greater emphasis on competitive funding and transitional housing could jeopardize permanent housing programs that have taken years to build.
The Machinery Underneath
Regardless of changes in Washington, the county’s infrastructure continues to operate.
Coordinated Entry replaced what had largely been a first-come, first-served system by using a common assessment process intended to prioritize households facing the greatest vulnerability.
Behind that system is HMIS, the countywide database that allows providers to coordinate services, monitor outcomes, reduce duplication and meet HUD reporting requirements.
A Youth Advisory Board composed of young adults with lived experience of homelessness also advises the Continuum of Care.
What changes under the current federal proposals is not this machinery but the rules governing which projects receive funding.
Santa Barbara County can submit its strongest possible application, but the rules of the competition — and potentially the future of the program itself — are being determined in Washington and the federal courts.
Whatever one’s view of Housing First versus recovery-first approaches, the deeper issue is institutional continuity.
Local providers spend years building the partnerships, administrative systems and housing programs that make coordinated homelessness services possible. Those relationships cannot be rebuilt overnight whenever federal priorities change.
Whether the current legal challenges ultimately succeed or fail, Santa Barbara County’s Continuum of Care illustrates a larger reality: effective responses to homelessness depend not only on funding, but on stable institutions capable of sustaining long-term collaboration.